ETS Results: Once Top 4

Brian “LocoPojo” Krantz is one of the forefathers of Eternal, he’s been around since the very beginning. He was in the first Closed Beta wave and he’s been playing in the ETS since Season 1 (and in the Scion’s League before that, topping its point chart). If you think of a deck, he’s probably built it and put up a YouTube video about it – the jankier the better. But if you haven’t been paying attention to the ETS since the beginning, you might not know that he’s tied for 4th most Series Points, despite only playing up through the Midseason Major. He took top 4 or better in every Major event he played in, before retiring to the casting booth.

Some of his most famous moments from the early ETS events were his Top 4 run in his first event, where he burned SirRhino out with Greed’s Reward (A card removed in Open Beta – 6F: Deal 2 damage to your opponent for each card they have in hand) to guarantee his place in the top 8 … and got burned out by his own card, after Rhino stole it with a Feln Bloodcaster, when they met again later in the Top 4. He also showed a new player just how high the ceiling of the format could go in the November 12th ETS, where he cast Channel the Tempest into into Scourge of Frosthome into Last Word into ult Last Word for lethal, all in one turn. (It was me – I was super excited to play a player I looked up to, and super happy he stomped me in his unique fashion.)

Pojo’s flair isn’t just for his stream and Youtube, it translates into his competitive play. Pojo shucks the popular view on card quality and trusts his own, fiercely independent judgement of cards. What Pojo loses in repeated reps on the same deck, he makes up by having played probably the most different decks of anyone in the game.

The November (Season 1) Invitational saw Pojo playing Praxis-splash-Justice tokens with Claw of the First Dragon and putting it to good use. In a match in early Season 2, he ran the list back and got a spectacular comeback win when his Claw gave him a Jito while he had a double activated Obelisk in play.

For Season 2, Pojo innovated on Stonescar, putting together Stonescar Maulers – A cross between Stonescar Burn and Stonescar Midrange, that had a focus on weapons. Between Flail, Maul, Obliterate, and Flame Blast, Pojo’s opponents always had to play on the defensive, as no amount of life total seemed safe. But just playing defensive and holding your shields didn’t work either, as Pojo started to experiment with Subvert, a way to pick his opponent’s late-game trump cards out of hand while. Pojo once managed to Subvert 3 of his favorite card – Channel the Tempest – from his opponent over a single series.

Further, Pojo put his opponents on the back foot in deckbuilding and sideboarding – relic hate cards were very popular in sideboards during that time, so for post-board games, Pojo would take out all his relics, often leaving his opponents with a Decay or Ruin stranded in hand.

For the Season 2 Invitational, Pojo packed Voprex into his deck, accurately predicting Big Combrei would be a large portion of the field. A card once considered useless, Pojo put it to good use against his Combrei opponents, as that is one of the few decks that will often have both a powerful board and powerful hand by the time Voprex hits the board. Pojo lost in the Winner’s Finals to iReedMinds, but fought his way to a rematch through SirRhino. Pojo managed to give Reed his first loss of the tournament in the Grand Finals to reset the bracket, but couldn’t clinch the victory.

Season 3 was the start of Pojo’s casting career, and he didn’t manage to make it to the Season 3 Invitational, but he was already a lock for the Midseason Major. His deck for MSM was a bit less spicy than usual, but it was a Pojo-original all the same – Big Elysian. It was a version of Elysian Midrange that traded some of the explosive potential for Staff of Stories, 4 Mystic Ascendants, and 4 Predatory Carnosaurs in the main deck. Pojo predicted a slow meta for the Midseason Major, and it paid off. The deck’s goal against other midrange decks was to get into a board stall, chomp Titans with Predatory Carnosaurs, and dig for Crystalize with Ascendants and Staff. It took him to a top 3 finish.

People like to joke that tournament players join the ETS staff once they’ve become washed up – and with people like me and aReNGee himself on the team, are they really wrong? But if you think that’s true about LocoPojo, you might be in for a rude awakening come Worlds. Underestimate him at your own peril.